“How could you give up Monica Arlen and marry someone else?”
His gentler manner toward me vanished in an instant. Saxon Scott had a temper himself, but before he could demolish me, I went on quickly.
“Look—I really can’t tell where the worst quagmires lie. If I don’t ask provocative questions I’ll never get anything to tell me what you are like.”
He stood up, and I thought for a moment that he was going to dismiss me without another word, but he merely changed the subject.
“Perhaps there are some things around the house I can show you—pictures and objects that will touch on your story. Perhaps they’ll even give you a few safer questions to ask. I don’t keep everything in one place. What I’ve collected is part of my life, and it’s spread throughout the house.”
When he led me into his study, my eye was caught by a wall of photographs behind the desk. I stepped over to it at once. An enlargement that occupied central space was of a smiling young woman with an impish face, and short curly hair. She sat in a chair beside a swimming pool, with a terry wrap around her, and a small child in her arms.
Saxon noted my interest. “My wife,” he said. “My ex-wife, Alva. And our boy.”
No one had told me there’d been a child. Saxon went on.
“Our son died when he was a year old.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It was a long time ago. Though there are always tender places. We’ve remained friends of sorts—Alva and I.”
“What was she like—your wife?”
“A good scout. A good friend.”
“But she wasn’t Monica.”
“No, she couldn’t be. I suppose it was our mutual affection for Monica that drew us together. It was a mistake for us to marry—a mistake for both of us. She’s been a lot happier with Nicos Leonidas. Would you like me to call her now and set up a definite appointment?”
“That would be fine. Perhaps I could see her tomorrow.”
Saxon picked up the phone on his desk and dialed. “Hi, Alva. I told you about Carol Hamilton, Monica Arlen’s niece. She’d like to come up tomorrow to talk with you.”
The woman at the other end asked a question.
“Yes, of course it’s all right. At least with me. I’ll trust you to be discreet, Alva. There’s a lot you and Nicos can tell Miss Hamilton that will help with her book. Any stories you remember about Monica.”
When he hung up he smiled at me. “There you are. She can give you a great deal. Though perhaps not everything you want.”
“Not when you’ve suggested discretion. There’s to be a conspiracy of silence, isn’t there? So how do I break through?”
He was no longer smiling. “You won’t need to. It will all explode by itself one of these days. When the right time comes, the volcano will blow its top. And we’ll all be wiped out in the ashes.”
He sounded ominously prophetic. “You are scheming something. Linda said you were.”
With an effort he shook off the brooding mood that had settled upon him. “I have a plan—not a scheme. And nothing volcanic. I’d like Monica to join me in making a gift to El Mirador when it’s restored. All these things I’ve saved, and that Linda tells me Monica has collected, ought to be preserved after we’re gone. They’re movie history, I suppose. I’ve thought of presenting an Arlen-Scott collection to El Mirador, if it seems appropriate. There’ll be other stars to honor, as well, if I can sell this idea. Perhaps we could even announce it at the benefit, when Mirage is shown.”
Why didn’t I feel reassured? There was nothing here to disturb Monica. She too should want to see these collections preserved. Though it occurred to me that Linda might guard them more jealously than Monica herself, and I wondered if she would be willing to give them up to more impersonal care. I’d seen instances where a privileged caretaker became the possessor who would part with nothing.
“Will Monica really appear at the theater with you?”
“She’ll come. She won’t be able to help herself. In a way, we’re still bound together. Perhaps by our own fears and distrust of each other. She won’t want me to go out on that stage without her.”
I was still moving from one photo to the next. A small snapshot had been tucked between two larger pictures. In it Saxon stood with two women, one of them a young, laughing Monica. The other woman was fair-haired, wore dark glasses, and looked slightly dowdy. Even in the small print I could see her sullen expression.
“Who is this with you and Monica?” I asked.
Behind me, Saxon was silent for a moment. When I looked around, he grimaced wryly. “She’s your mystery woman—Peggy Smith. That was taken at El Mirador when we were shooting Mirage.”
I studied the snapshot with more interest, but I could tell nothing about the second woman except that she’d been in a bad temper when the picture was snapped.
“I saved that because it’s so good of Monica,” he said, as though some explanation was necessary.
Door chimes sounded, and I heard steps in the tiled foyer as Saxon’s man went to answer the door. When Wally’s spirited voice called out, Saxon sighed.
“I’ll have to see him. Do you mind?”
We returned to the living room, where Wally waited, looking as colorful as ever in green slacks and a Hawaiian shirt.
He beamed at us. “Hi, Carol. Hello, Sax.”
It was the first time I’d seen Wally since he’d brought Owen to Monica’s house yesterday, but he was behaving as though we were on the most affable terms. His relationship with Saxon, however, had taken on an edge.
Saxon grimaced at the familiar shortening of his name, and he was clearly impatient with Wally’s unexpected appearance. A fact that was not lost on Wally. For all his good cheer, I suspected that a growing resentment lingered just beneath the surface in Wally Davis.
Now, however, he sounded exuberant as he spoke. “Sax, you have to be the first to hear that Monica’s agreed to appear with you at the benefit. Linda called me a little while ago. I can’t wait to start the wheels turning! The date is set for early December, so we can go into high gear right away. Can’t you see the headlines? Scott and Arlen together again! We can name our price for the tickets. All Hollywood will come. We’re lucky there’s been a cancellation, so we can step in fast.”
Saxon glanced at me with a hint of triumph in his eyes. In spite of Monica’s near collapse this morning, she’d apparently changed her mind with equal swiftness and agreed to appear. Perhaps, as Saxon said, she wouldn’t let him go out on that stage without her.
“Fine,” he told Wally. “I knew she’d agree. Though coming on right after the picture, the audience is likely to see us as a couple of antiques.”
“They’ll love you!” Wally cried. “They’ll be soppy with emotion. How could there be a dry eye in the house?”
“When Monica steps out on that stage,” I said, “she’ll make everyone who sees her believe the legend again. She may even make you look old, Mr. Scott.”
Saxon smiled with no real pleasure. “Thanks for coming to tell me, Wally Anything else?”
It was a clear dismissal, and I caught an edge of rancor in Wally again as he started for the door. I stopped him before he went out, and this time I couldn’t keep my own feelings from showing.
“Do you know what Owen Barclay is planning next?”
Wally glanced at me in surprise. “I’m hardly in his confidence. Have you told Sax that this Barenklovich fellow he sent to me is your ex-husband?”
Saxon looked astonished. “I didn’t know. Carol, I’m terribly sorry. This puts a new light on everything. Sit down a minute, Wally, and let’s talk about this. I didn’t like the man particularly, but he seemed to have legitimate business with Monica. What’s this all about?”
Wally came back into the room, though he didn’t sit down. “It’s simple enough. He’s made an offer for Monica’s Beverly Hills place. A cool three million. Considering how hard it is to move those old mansions, it’s pretty generous. So how c
an she refuse, no matter who he is?”
To my surprise, Saxon responded with a greater anger than I’d seen in him before. This was far beyond mere irritation.
“I want this stopped!” he told Wally. “She mustn’t be allowed to sell Cadenza. Get busy and find a way to stop him!”
Wally looked surly. “How can I do that? Even if I wanted to, there’s no way.”
“You’ll get a commission, of course?”
“Look,” Wally said, “this is already out of my hands, and I don’t want to make waves. Even if I am working for you—”
“If you don’t scotch it, you may not be working for me much longer,” Saxon warned, sounding as arrogant as he could be on the screen. “And don’t forget—I know a few things.”
The threat was there, and Wally turned beet red. “I’ll do what I can,” he blurted, and almost fled for the front door.
I hated what Saxon had done, and I didn’t want to stay in this house a moment longer. Nor did I want Saxon to drive me back to Palm Springs.
“Wait, please, Wally,” I said. “I’m ready to leave, so perhaps I can go with you?”
“Sure.” Wally was curt, still smarting under Saxon’s words. “Come along,” he added, and went out to his car.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I said to Saxon;
He held my hand for a moment. “I’m sorry this session hasn’t gone well for you. If you like, we can set another date.”
“I’ll phone you,” I said stiffly.
All I wanted was to escape. I couldn’t forget Saxon’s treatment of Monica that morning, and he’d been equally cruel just now to poor Wally Davis. Saxon Scott was no more like his gallant screen image than Monica Arlen was like hers. Only the picture he’d created on the screen of a sometimes dangerous and hot-tempered man seemed to ring true. Everything else was illusion, and it’s always depressing when illusions dissolve.
He walked to the door with me. “Would you like to know why I don’t want to see Monica sell her Beverly Hills house?” he asked.
His tone had turned surprisingly gentle again, and I glanced at him quickly. “I haven’t thought much about it. It was the way you treated Wally just now that struck me.”
“Perhaps I have a feeling that Cadenza ought to be yours someday.”
This was an astonishing idea. “Why should it? What in the world would I do with it? I certainly couldn’t afford to keep it.”
“You might give it to a foundation—where she wouldn’t. Too many of those old dream palaces have been bulldozed. Yet they’re a part of movie history, California history, that will never come again.”
“It’s all academic, anyway,” I said. “I don’t suppose I’m even in Monica’s will. Besides, I don’t believe for a moment that Owen will carry through on his offer. Of course he’d make the amount large, so he can keep her dangling for a while. It’s all a way of getting to Keith and me.”
“I’m very sorry I played a part in this,” he said again, and I could almost believe the ring of sincerity in his voice.
Being diplomatic didn’t matter to me anymore, and I asked the one point-blank question I’d never expected to put to him.
“This morning Monica told me that you killed Peggy Smith. Was she making that up?”
All the life seemed to drain out of him, and with it the last shreds of pretense he might keep up. When he spoke, it seemed to be out of old pain, no longer concealed.
“It’s true enough,” he said. “I destroyed Peggy Smith in more ways than one, and I will never forgive myself.”
“You mean you caused her to kill herself?” I asked softly.
“I pulled the trigger of that gun,” he said, and opened the door for me. “Wally’s waiting, Carol.”
“But I can’t leave everything like this!” I cried, completely shocked. “If it’s true, why would Monica have been willing to keep still all these years?”
“Because she loved me,” he said grimly. “For a time.”
I went out to Wally, not daring to ask another question.
THIRTEEN
Wally and I talked very little on the drive back to Palm Springs. His surly, unhappy mood was understandable, and I felt sick with shock over Saxon’s words. He was an actor, and actors could exaggerate and dramatize. They were often onstage. Yet he had spoken at the end with such devastating calm that I had to believe him. Sometimes today I’d almost liked him, and at other moments I’d found him detestable. But the quiet pain that had wrenched out those words of admission had been real. What horrors had he and Monica lived with for all these years?
I began to seek a cause. Some reason that might have driven him to such an act. Peggy Smith must have done something awful to bring out this violence in Saxon. Probably only Monica could tell me, and I didn’t know if she would ever speak.
Shakespeare’s memorable line beat through my mind: Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long. Yet here was murder that had lain hidden for thirty-six years! Only to surface now. But why? What catalyst had set the ugly past stirring for Saxon and Monica? Not my presence, surely, for all this had begun before I came. In any case, this was something I wouldn’t speak about to Linda right away.
As we neared Smoke Tree House, the frightening present began to surface again—more threatening than the past. Owen Barclay was the now for me.
Wally said he’d rather not come up to the house, and would I mind phoning for someone to pick me up at the gate? I didn’t mind, and he drove away, lost in his own gloom.
In a few moments Jason’s station wagon came down the road, with Jason at the wheel. A feeling of pleasure and relief rose in me at the sight of him. He looked healthy, without being one of the lotus-eaters who lay forever in the sun. He had his own private tragedy, yet he appeared to deal with it without letting it destroy him. His cheerful greeting told me that all was well with Keith up at the house.
“Hello, Carol.” He reached over to open the car door for me. “We’ve finished lunch, but Helsa can get something for you if you haven’t eaten.”
He was glad to see me, and I was unexpectedly glad to see him. I could let it go at that for now.
“Linda told me what happened at El Mirador this morning,” he said as we drove up the mountain. “I’m afraid Monica has gone into another of her retreats, as Linda calls them.”
“Just the same, she’s agreed to appear with Saxon at the Annenberg,” I said. “Even though what Saxon put her through today was pretty bad, she’s given in.”
When we reached the house, I went first to look for Keith, and found him in the garden with Jonah having a picnic. Ralph was with them, sharing sandwiches. In spite of my uneasiness where Ralph was concerned, his liking for Keith seemed genuine, and that, for me, was his one appealing quality.
“Thank you, Ralph,” I said. “You’re very good with small boys.”
He grinned at me. “I’m good with little girls, too.”
I should have known better than to speak to him at all. I kissed Keith and went back to the dining room, where Linda and Jason sat with me at the table while I ate a light lunch.
“What Saxon did this morning was horrible!” Linda cried the moment I appeared. “I never dreamed he’d pull a thing like that.”
“Hey—calm down,” Jason told her. “Monica can’t feel so bad if she’s said she’ll go onstage with him.”
“That’s only because he’s threatening her in some way,” Linda said indignantly. “She won’t tell me what she’s afraid of, but I know there’s something.… I don’t want her to do this—it’s too risky.”
A reluctance to betray Saxon’s “confession” held me silent. In spite of everything, in some way I didn’t understand, I felt I owed him my silence.
I could tell Linda something else, however. “Wally came in while I was at Saxon’s and he brought me home. He seemed very excited about Monica’s consenting to appear.”
Linda shook her head regretfully. “I can’t even talk to Wally these days. There was a time
when I thought it might be a good idea for Monica to come out in public. Now I’m afraid it will tear her apart. She hasn’t the strength to handle it.”
“Perhaps she has,” I said. “Perhaps you ought to give her a chance to show Saxon the woman she can still be. That could mend her pride and re-energize her more than anything else.”
“Carol’s right,” Jason agreed. “All this coddling and protection you go in for isn’t a good idea. Not for you, Linda, or for Monica. It’s nonsense to think of her as a great star whom you have to preserve. She’s not a lab specimen! I’ll bet she’s a lot tougher than you give her credit for. If she’s all that great, let her come out and prove it!”
Linda looked outraged, and I suspected that nothing we said would change her mind. She really was the conservator of a museum, in which the most valuable artifact was still alive. Nevertheless, I was grateful to Jason for telling her the truth, and I remembered ruefully that only a little while ago I’d have sided with Linda against him. By this time perhaps some sort of clean desert wind was blowing through me.
“Saxon didn’t know about Owen’s offer to buy Cadenza,” I told Linda. “Wally opened all that up while he was there, and Saxon seemed upset. I wonder why.”
“Who cares?” She was still fuming. “Monica will have to take Owen Barclay’s offer, though I hate to see that house go. It’s where Monica lived during her great days, and of course Saxon was in and out of it constantly, so he may have a proprietary feeling about it.”
I didn’t dare tell her what Saxon had said about the house coming to me. That was nothing I wanted to have happen, and it was ridiculous. What I wanted not to happen was that they should all take Owen’s offer seriously. No one would believe in my warnings. The sound of three million dollars was enough to smoke screen anything I might say.
I spoke to Jason, changing the subject. “Saxon has made arrangements for me by phone to meet Alva and Nicos Leonidas tomorrow morning. If you’re free, it would be fine if you could drive me up there.”
“I can manage it, and I’ll be glad to.” His words and his look warmed me. I had one friend, at least.
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